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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

How American Food Got So Bad? (explained through Economics)

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I think many of us would struggle when we are asked "What is your favorite American food?". It would probably be easy to name a bunch of restaurants and "Western" food found in America, but not so easy when you want to think of food that originated from the US. I have always wondered why. I guess now, I have some form of explanation:

Tyler Cowen: A lot of good restaurants, they make a lot of the profits on the drinks. When you shut down their ability to sell wine, beer, other drinks, basically it put them all out of business. Those quality restaurants, within a period of year or two, they vanished.

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Cowen: Compared to a lot of Asian cultures, or European cultures, when it comes to the food scene, very often in America the child is in charge, and that again means soft, and sweet, and gooey.

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Dubner: Immigration. Or, really, the lack immigration. The Immigration Act of 1924 set quotas that weren’t lifted until the 1960s. More immigration generally means more food innovation. New — you know, everything — spices, ingredients, know-how strategies — and we weren’t getting a lot of either of those.